My own hearing tells me he’s saying “Press the button. No, don’t press the button. The button’s bad.” as heard in the back-to-back version. His message is very rushed so as not to arouse suspicion, but whose? His captors? Desmond? Someone else?

Thanks to Phil Kloer for including me in his article, TV’s latest phenom is awash with theories, questions and very few answers. The article won’t appear in the print version of the paper until Sunday’s Arts section, but you can read …

it definately says on a forum i thinks its thenumbers one http://www.4815162342.com or the official abc site and in one of the podcasts that walt said: ‘push the button, dont push the button, bad’ so either way the losties are screwed

we listened to it and it said ‘press the button, locke must be spared’. that would make sense because if they don’t push the button then something might happen that would involve locke dying and they might need him to defeat the others…….oooooo……

“Lost” reveals in one place what it conceals in another. Remember Juliet’s explaining how Benry would leave instructions on tape on a 2-track recorder? That was our clue. Walt had help using it, saying, “Push the button” after it was already running, but then realizing it was recording on the wrong track, said, “No, button’s bad.” Meaning it was set wrong. So he switched tracks. Then he concealed the player on himself, and, at the time in question, played the tape. But he played the wrong track, which when played back was backwards!